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for which we do not adequately test in the United Kingdom. For example, toxoplasmosis is a blood disorder for which we do not test in pregnancy as I believe we should ; it can cause physical defects, including hearing loss.As one in 10 of the population of the United Kingdom has a significant hearing loss, which could be corrected, it can be seen that this is a large problem.
If one discovers that one is deaf, one goes first to one's doctor. National Health Service practitioners often know little about hearing because the medical profession knows that it cannot do much to correct hearing loss. Very little can be done surgically except in rare instances. Nonetheless, the filter that has been set up to enable one to achieve one's goal, which is to have one's hearing corrected, is a series of fine screens, which are so effective that few people emerge at the far end having achieved their goal. I shall take my area--the south-west--as an example. I represent a constituency with 92 villages, 35 hamlets and five market towns. It is the most glorious part of the United Kingdom and is spread over 1, 000 square miles. Because it is so beautiful, many elderly people retire to our area, and because it is so lovely, mercifully, people live for a long time. Therefore, we have a well above average age profile in our population and a low pay-out of child benefit. The hospitals to which such people must go to get their first appointment with an ear, nose and throat surgeon--that is the second hurdle that one must face--are far away geographically. It could take somebody living in the village where I live two and a half hours to get to Barnstaple. My constituents are unlikely to have transport--we are not a rich area--so they will use the hospital car service. Marvellous though it is, it is mainly a volunteer service and sometimes it forgets to come or it may be late.
The hospital car service was late in calling for the lady who lives with me. As I was up in Westminster I could not take her and she cannot walk. She was going for hydrotherapy. When, eventually, after two and a half hours, they reached Barnstaple, the appointment had evaporated. Other people in different villages may be nearer Plymouth, which can be just as difficult to get to, or Exeter, which is the third referral point for ENT surgeons and consultants.
ENT consultants are busy professionals with lengthy waiting lists. In Plymouth, for example, the waiting time--this is no fault of the ENT consultant--is over 18 months. I have two constituents aged 83 and 85 respectively who have waited for well over 18 months to get on that step of this Jacob's ladder to heaven. They still have not seen him, and the consultant can offer them no date. I hope they will not be dead by the time they get an appointment.
Once they have an appointment, it is 99.9 per cent. certain that the consultant will not be able to do anything for them, because virtually all hearing defects are inoperable. Few people qualify for Cochlear ear implants, which are new and difficult and can cause problems. So, generally speaking, the consultant refers one to the clinic in the hospital which deals with hearing aids.
As a hearing aid user, I am aware of how many fittings one may need to make the aid work for oneself. The first one selected may not be the most suitable. If that happens, it will not be the fault of the dispenser, and I pay tribute
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to the excellence of the audiology departments in hospitals. Their staff are superb but, alas, they are gravely handicapped in what they can offer the patient.The NHS hearing aid provision comprises only one type of aid. I sometimes wonder whether the NHS has noticed that God has given us two ears. Balance is best achieved by both ears hearing equally, and the provision of hearing aids is designed to correct imbalances in hearing. Often when one goes deaf the two ears do not age, in hearing terms, at the same rate. Nevertheless, in the NHS it is one only, so if one is lucky enough to get an aid, one emerges unbalanced. Being unbalanced, one canot tell where the noise is coming from. One is fussed and bothered and must turn round trying to puzzle out whether the noise is coming from behind, from left or right or ahead. We have two ears to act as funnels for the input of noise. Hearing aids are not like spectacles in terms of technical excellence. They will be one day. After all, if we can put men on the moon, why cannot we correct the hearing of those left on earth?
Instead of having spectacles ground to one's prescription so that they exactly match--or as near as science can manage--one's defects, hearing aid provision is similar to buying a dress or a shirt. There are a number of sizes. One chooses the article closest to one's size and has it altered. The hearing aid is altered by the dispenser. The NHS thinks that we are all fat, medium or thin. On the other hand, Marks and Spencer knows in its wisdom that we range from size 8 to size 24. The NHS thinks that all human beings are one of three stock variations. I have news for the NHS. That is not the case. If one goes to a private hearing aid dispenser one can choose from perhaps 250 variations of aid.
One is given an aid under the NHS and it does not fit one's hearing. Worse still, it may hurt. Hearing loss occurs at different levels. One may have lost hearing at the lower level, affecting the lower range of hearing. The tone control on the NHS hearing aid can be adjusted to help that lower tone. It cannot be adjusted to help the top range, and one may have perfect hearing at the top. That means that the hearing aid will amplify until perhaps it hurts at the higher level of noise.
That does not happen when one goes to a private dispenser, where one has a choice of 250 variations, the chosen one then being modified to suit one's needs. The modification of hearing aids is the key mechanism in creating the perfect answer. I have the perfect answer, and I know how fortunate I am that, although I was born with this boring handicap, which I did not regard as a handicap, I am perfectly all right. But most elderly people I meet are not perfectly all right because they have to go back to the hospital time and again for fittings to adjust a wretched device which ultimately does not help them. That is why at least one in three hearing aids lives in the top right hand drawer of somebody's dressing table and the drawer is never opened.
What is the answer? I offer several solutions. The aim must be to make it as easy, simple and socially acceptable to get a hearing aid as it is to buy a pair of glasses or a tin of baked beans. A hearing aid should be a normal commodity which is bought and sold so that no one is ashamed or embarrassed, and people would put all their energies not into deflecting public criticism or family
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ostracism, but into the effort needed between the patient and the dispenser to achieve the best result. Not all people with hearing loss are as lucky as I am in terms of near-full correction being available practically anywhere. Most people have to seek the best possible correction while the technologists create ever better hearing aids.I seek the provision of hearing aids on the high street with a voucher system because it is important that patients are referred by a doctor. It is crucial to see the doctor, because people go to hearing aid dispensers with conditions that have nothing to do with deafness. For example, if tinnitus--a horrible buzzing in the ears--is a new condition, it is conceivable that it is nothing to do with hearing but is an acoustic neuroma, a tumour on the auditory nerve. To leave that alone would lead to real trouble. The onset of deafness definitely needs a medical examination. If one's ears are infected, one needs antibiotics, not a hearing aid ; vertigo could be the onset of Meniere's disease, so a private dispenser must have a code of practice by which he refers a patient to the doctor before he starts his work.
Hearing aids should be available on the high street, and once a doctor has referred someone to a hearing aid dispenser he should give him a voucher to buy the best possible aid available throughout the full gamut of hearing aids.
The production cost of a National Health Service hearing aid is approximately £21.50, or £23 for the better variant. But private aids are horrifically expensive. Mine is not, as I go to someone of integrity, but people have written to me that they have spent £2,000 on useless aids, nearly always because they have been sold them on the doorstep. I would outlaw doorstep selling, with no further ado. It is a dreadful way of providing a health care product. Elderly people are vulnerable at home. I have had people knocking on my door trying to sell me hearing aids. It is a disgraceful state of affairs and it is sad that companies indulge in such practices, but they do so because the number of their clients is so small. Yet the volume of people needing hearing aids is vast.
If there were hearing aid shops on the high streets as there are opticians' shops, and people had vouchers, they could spend that money as they wished on the variant that suited them best, with the doctor's chit, to prove that they needed an aid in the first place. Children under 16 should go to hospital. We must continue that facility. Perhaps the disabled need home visits, but otherwise the High street is the place.
Furthermore, I would abolish the Hearing Aid Council which reports to the Department of Trade and Industry on a matter of health. It is a most peculiar body and is oddly constructed. That is not its fault. It was set up by a Government. Manufacturers and those who are meant to represent users sit on it. It is a hybrid, a mule, and can produce no fertile offspring. There should be a council, but for quality control, reporting to the Minister for Health. The hearing aid industry which produces aids should have its trade association. When a farmer buys a tractor, he does not expect there to be a tractor council comprising all those who build tractors and farmers who drive them, working out whether they have the best mechanism for ploughing the land. Other reforms could also be introduced. That is the substance of my plea to the Minister today.
Much marvellous work is done for the blind--so much so that Guide Dogs for the Blind has £80 million per
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annum in income. Hearing Dogs for the Deaf does not have a fraction of that income, yet the need is as great. There is a huge submerged audience. I am proud to have been able to articulate their deprivation in the House. I call on the Minister to comit himself to investigating with his usual penetrating thoroughness and vision this social scandal. Perhaps he should set up a working party, but let it be time-limited. The problem has been invisible on the agendas of Governments for too long.1.16 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Mr. Roger Freeman) : I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Torridge andDevon, West (Miss Nicholson) on an impressive and persuasive speech. She and I have been able to hear each other during the debate, which is not always the case--certainly at certain times of the proceedings in this honourable House.
Perhaps it is not untimely or inappropriate to pay tribute to those who work in the House operating our effective system of microphones and loudspeakers. Many who listen to our proceedings do not know that the microphone is switched on immediately above the hon. Member who is speaking. Hon. Members like me, who do not have as brilliant a range of hearing as our colleagues, find the loudspeakers immensely helpful. Frequently I have been saved from embarrassment when being asked an oral question which I cannot hear by catching the last phrases of the question from the loudpseaker on the back of the Bench.
My hon. Friend and I met recently at the Department of Health to discuss this matter. Today she made six major points. I followed her speech with great care and I agree with her analysis. She talked about the social stigma and misunderstanding about deafness. She said that it was a widespread disability. She has that disability and other hon. Members and I have members of our family with that disability.
My hon. Friend spoke about the National Health Service procedures which involve waiting lists and distances to travel. She talked about the importance of having a range of different appliances available and the greater choice in the private sector. She outlined a solution, which is liberation and transferring the service largely to the high street through reference by general practitioners. She talked about bad selling practice.
To a certain extent, my hon. Friend is pushing at an open door. We have unlocked it and our hand is on the handle. I am sure that my hon. Friend will find that the Government--obviously, I speak particularly for the Department of Health--are sympathetic to her analysis. In the coming months we must work on a sensible set of reforms, which commend themselves to all those who work in the Health Service and, above all, meet patient needs.
My hon. Friend spoke without notes, with conviction and clarity. I am not so fortunate. The disciplines of office, my lack of eloquence and my comparative lack of experience in this matter dictate that, for the remaining minutes of this debate, I shall refer to my notes more copiously than my hon. Friend.
I shall commence by explaining how the NHS service operates. When people realise that there is something wrong with their hearing, their first step should be to consult their general practitioner. If, in the opinion of the
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GP, further advice or treatment is necessary the patient will usually be referred to a hospital. It is normal practice for a hospital doctor to examine the patient and, where this is appropriate, to refer the patient to a hearing aid centre, to be fitted with the correct hearing aid. In a significant number of cases the person referred for a hearing aid will also require specialist medical attention.Hearing aids in the NHS are issued free on loan. Mersey regional health authority, as a national centre of responsibility, procures the aids, stores them at Runcorn and distributes them to hearing aid centres throughout the country on demand. I understand that around 470,000 hearing aids are issued each year to NHS patients in England and Wales.
A wide range of hearing aids are available under NHS arrangements and they are mainly worn behind the ear. Some are high-powered models. Most patients' needs can be met from the NHS range. I accept, however, that inevitably, the range of hearing aids is not as extensive as can be obtained in the private sector. Hon. Members will recall that that was the case when spectacles were manufactured by the NHS.
When new users are issued with hearing aids, audiology technicians usually provide advice and information on how to use and maintain them. They also provide all new users with a copy of the Department's booklet which explains how to use a hearing aid. Efficient follow-up after issue of a hearing aid is essential and that usually takes place at a hearing aid centre or involves a hearing therapist, where one is in post. The rehabilitation of people with hearing loss is not just a matter of providing a hearing aid. It can require time and special skills.
I am aware that there are long waiting times and lists to see consultants and to have hearing aids fitted in some districts, although not in all. I appreciate that there are significant waiting times in my hon. Friend's constituency. In many districts efforts are made to prioritise patients and in several general practitioners can refer patients direct to hearing aid centres. Despite those practices, I know that many people are dissatisfied with the present arrangements and would welcome improvements.
The main thrust of the Fair Hearing Campaign launched by the Royal National Institute of the Deaf in November was that adult hearing aid services should be transferred from hospitals to health centres or group practices. Children would still be referred to a hospital ear, nose and throat department, but only those adults requiring specialist treatment would be referred there. The dispensing of hearing aids would be done by a "community dispenser", who might be employed by the district health authority, general practitioners or a private company contracted by general practitioners.
Since November, those ideas have been discussed with the RNID and others involved. I must say that not all are content with what the RNID has proposed. For example, the British Association of the Hard of Hearing and the British Association of Audiology Technicians have different views. My hon. Friend has a more radical view than the RNID.
The British Association of the Hard of Hearing welcomed the fact that the whole question of hearing aid provision had been brought into the arena for discussion. It agreed, in principle, that a community-based audiology service would be a good step forward, but it is unhappy
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about the detail of the RNID proposals and feels that the existing NHS hearing aid service as a whole should be reshaped, rather than creating a completely new service.The British Association of Audiology Technicians has submitted alternative proposals to my Department. It proposes a total review of the audiology services within the existing NHS system. Such a review would cover a number of issues, including staffing levels, salaries, career prospects, working conditions and funding. The BAAT also wants to retain existing audiology departments within district general hospitals, improve audiology technicians' pay and conditions of service, accelerate referral procedures and expand the NHS range of hearing aids. There are clearly a lot of important issues for consideration in each of those packages of proposals.
I stress at this point that I am talking about the provision of hearing aids for adults. I agree with my hon. Friend that the present procedures for referring children to consultants in hospitals must be right. Most people--including the Royal National Institute for the Deaf--agree that there should be no change in the procedures for the referral of children. I have explained that the NHS range of hearing aids should meet most people's needs and that special arrangements can be made for the others. Perhaps I should add that the NHS range of hearing aids is kept under constant review by a commodity advisory group advising Mersey regional health authority. The Department of Health is represented on that group. However, of course, within the constraints of the present system of procurement and distribution, my hon. Friend's criticism of the range of choice of products is accepted and understood.
I know that a number of organisations, including the Royal National Institute for the Deaf, have expressed concern about dispensers calling at the homes of potential purchasers. The Hearing Aid Council's own code of conduct rules out an unsolicited call and the Doorstep Selling Regulations which came into force on 1 July 1988 provide for a seven-day cooling-off period during which consumers have the right to cancel a contract entered into during an unsolicited visit by a trader to their home or place of work. The Hearing Aid Council's code requires the consumer to send back a card declining a visit rather than seeking one. I am aware that this system has been the subject of particular criticism by the RNID, and no doubt the Hearing Aid Council will be considering the matter. The private sector sells about 80,000 hearing aids a year. The Hearing Aid Council receives about 70 complaints a year, and I understand that the RNID has received 260 in the past four months. It is important that concerns of customers should be communicated to the Hearing Aid Council, so that the extent of any problems can be objectively assessed. The Government believe that home visits do have a part to play. They provide a service to some of the
hearing-impaired, particularly the elderly and infirmed. Such visits should be conducted to the highest ethical standards. The House will have noted my hon. Friend's comments about practices in that area.
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There is some disagreement among those who wish to see radical changes about how closely the fitting of hearing aids can be compared to the supply of spectacles. I am aware that my hon. Friend, for example, sees a direct comparison between the supply of spectacles and hearing aids, while the organisation behind the current Fair Hearing Campaign, the Royal National Institute for the Deaf, has emphasised some of the differences. Corrective lenses can return sight to near-normal, but a scientific evaluation of hearing is not sufficient to indicate the likely benefit to be gained from a hearing aid. With spectacles one immediately sees more clearly ; with a hearing aid sounds are louder but, especially for speech, not necessarily easier to understand.Subject to cosmetic considerations, people can take immediately to glasses, but it takes time and help to get used to a hearing aid. There are also differences in costs--private hearing aids can cost upwards of £400-- and in the typical user, as most hearing-impaired people are elderly.
We are grateful to my hon. Friend, to the Royal National Institute for the Deaf, and to all the other hon. Members and interested organisations for bringing these important issues to public attention. We are also grateful to all the organisations who have approached the Department about this for the concerned and constructive way in which they have taken part in discussions, and retained an open mind. We take their concerns about the present service--and those of my hon. Friend--very seriously.
This short debate has not been able to do justice to the complex issues involved, both for the private sector and for the National Health Service. I must emphasise to hon. Members that it will take time to consider them all, in the context of the important reforms which have recently been announced for the NHS.
I can tell the House, however, that I shall be visiting the chairman of the Mersey regional health authority, Sir Donald Wilson, on 3 April--as my hon. Friend knows, that authority is the centre of responsibility for the procurement and distribution of hearing aids--and I shall be raising those important issues with him. Before I meet him, I shall send him a copy of the Official Report of this debate. I am grateful to his authority for its considerable contribution to forward thinking about greater effectiveness in meeting the needs of all patients who require a hearing aid. I will also convey the feelings of the House on this matter to my right hon. and hon. Friends the Secretary of State for Health, the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and the Minister for the Disabled. My hon. Friend has asked for a working party. We have not one but several working parties already addressing some of the issues to which she has referred. This is an extremely important matter and, as I have said, we have sympathy with some of the arguments put by my hon. Friend and other hon. Members. I shall consult my colleagues and write to my hon. Friend concerning any issues that arise from my meeting with Sir Donald Wilson. I can assure my hon. Friend that our consideration of the case for reform will continue in earnest.
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Housing (Newham)
1.30 pm
Mr. Ron Leighton (Newham, North-East) : No Member of Parliament could represent a constituency in the London borough of Newham without living every day in the knowledge of the appalling housing of so many of its people, the gross overcrowding of 6,750 households, the chronic shortage of affordable rented accommodation, the thousands of desperate people on the council's waiting list--currently 9,511--the 4,541 people on the transfer list and the 600 homeless families living in squalid bed-and- breakfast accommodation. The crisis hangs like a pall of misery over the borough. It is with us constantly, with every telephone call, every postbag and every weekend surgery. Sometimes I think that hon. Members should swap surgeries and, on occasion, I should take the surgery of a Conservative Member, perhaps in a leafy suburb, while he or she takes one of mine in the inner city. In that way, they would meet the frustrated people who come to see me. They would meet the families sleeping in one room, people with fungus growing on their walls, people with leaking roofs and without adequate heating, bathrooms or inside lavatories. They would meet people without hot water and with dangerous wiring and people who cannot find anywhere to live and whose lives are being destroyed, and families who are breaking up under the strain. They would meet the genuine people who have been on the waiting list for years and are losing hope of ever being rehoused.
I would like Conservative Members to meet those people because that is Britain in 1989 after 10 years of their Government. They are our fellow citizens. Conservative Members would come out of those surgeries, as I do, emotionally drained and, I hope, shocked, bewildered and ashamed that we permit such things in our country today.
The housing crisis is a scandal and disgrace. It has been intensified every year the Government have been in office. We sometimes talk of the freedoms our citizens should enjoy in our society such as the right to free speech, and the right to vote. I would add to that list the right to a job and, after GCHQ, the right to join a trade union. But perhaps the most basic right of all is the right to a home and a roof over one's head. That is recognised even in primitive societies where, when a couple marry, the tribe rallies round to build them a hut. However, in modern Thatcherite Britain that is thought to be beyond us.
The Government's policy has been to encourage home ownership. There is nothing wrong with home ownership. Aneurin Bevan said that there is nothing in Socialism against owning one's own home, but that what we were against was someone owning several thousand other people's houses and exploiting them a la Rachman. Perversely, the effect of the Government's policy has been to push up house prices to unprecedented levels, thereby preventing access to home ownership. Some people talk of a rising market or a boom in house prices as if it were a good thing. However, when the price of anything else rises, it is known as inflation. The Government are supposed to be against inflation but they have engineered the biggest house price inflation in history, making it impossible for first-time buyers to buy. Is it any wonder that we cannot find train crews for the Northern line or bus drivers, nurses and teachers? They cannot find anywhere affordable to live.
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On top of that, those who mortgage themselves to the hilt to obtain somewhere to live, find themselves clobbered by the Chancellor's interest rate rises. The increases in August and October mean that the average home loan rate of 9.5 per cent. has rocketed to 13 per cent. That means that on a £30,000 mortgage over 25 years borrowers have to pay an extra £52.80 a month. On an endowment mortgage, they have to pay an additional £65.62 a month and it will be double that for a £60,000 mortgage. Is it any wonder that people are putting "For Sale" signs on their dream homes and many are becoming homeless as building societies foreclose? All that is under a Government who pretend to support home ownership.We need affordable houses to rent. We have 1 million fewer homes for rent in the private sector now than in 1979. The Government's efforts to reverse that will fail because it is more profitable to sell with vacant possession than to rent. The people who come to see me want local authority housing. That is the popular demand. That is precisely what the Government are destroying as a deliberate policy. They want to get the councils out of housing, and have said so. In 1977-78, the last full year of the Labour Government, 78,606 homes were started by local authorities in England and Wales, but by last year that figure had been cut by 79 per cent. to 16,193. There has been a relentless decline. New building is grinding to a halt. In Newham there were 1,079 new build starts in 1978-79, but in 1986-87, only 83, in 1987-88 only 31 and in 1988-89 only 66. At the same time, up until September 1988, 4,120 homes were sold under the right to buy. A further 3,287 applications to buy are outstanding. This represents a quarter of the total council stock, and the best three-bedroom houses at that.
The receipts from those sales cannot be used for new building because much of it goes to the Treasury. If the stock is sold, building is stopped, private renting diminishes and people are priced out of access to owner- occupation, what happens? There is an epidemic of homelessness. Newham has had a 12.5 per cent. increase in applications from homeless people each year since 1981. The cost of temporary accommodation to the council has increased from £52,000 in 1983-84 to £5.5 million in 1987-88. In the 1960s only 3 per cent. of lettings were to homeless people. In each of the past five years the majority of lettings has been to the homeless.
The council's 1989-90 housing investment programme bid--this is my main purpose in having the debate--was £100.65 million but the Government's allocation was only £14.432 million. That allocation was a cut in real terms of 24.5 per cent. over the previous year's provision and a cut of 69 per cent. over 1978-79. In other words, this year we shall get only 31 per cent. of what the borough got in the last year of the Labour Government. Housing has borne the largest cuts of all under the Government and it is destined to get even worse. Public expenditure plans show at national level a further reduction of local authority capital spending from £3.153 billion to £2.8 billion in 1990-91, an 11 per cent. cut and £2.65 billion in 1991-92, a further 5 per cent. cut.
It should be emphasised that the HIP allocation is not a Government grant but permission to spend and borrow. Virtually all housing, private and public, is financed by borrowing. Most of that expenditure is planned to be funded by capital receipts, much of it from the sale of council houses. Perversely, the new Housing Act 1988 will
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restrict Newham, along with other authorities, to only 25 per cent. of its capital receipts. That is astonishing. The council is prohibited from spending its own money. It cannot spend receipts from selling council houses or new buildings.The council is asking not for Government money, but for freedom to spend its own, but that permission is refused because of crazy ideological dogma, because the Government want to push councils out of housing provision. The Government have said that they do not want councils to build any more houses and they want their existing estates sold off. In fact, at the launching of the Housing Bill, the Secretary of State for the Environment the right hon. Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley) said :
"We'd like to see council house building at a low level with local authorities composed of providing housing in certain categories such as hostels or sheltered housing."
If the councils cannot help the desperate people who come to my surgeries, who will? This basic need cannot be left soley to market forces. Millions of people cannot afford to buy or rent on the open market. What will happen to them? If the Government are not interested or do not care about them, why should they deliberately obstruct local councils in spending their own money to help people in acute need? That policy is not only evil, but economically illiterate, because councils are giving priority to void reinstatement, rehabilitating empty homes and new build. It costs twice as much to keep families in bed-and-breakfast accommodation as to build new homes.
The reduced housing investment programme allocation means that Newham cannot give much help to housing associations, although the original bid included £18.4 million for such projects, nor can it give discretionary grants to occupants of private housing. The reduction significantly restricts the programme of improving existing council stock. There is a huge backlog of repairs. The total expenditure necessary to improve existing stock is an enormous £120 million. The 1989-90 HIP bid asked for £6.5 million for security work, lift renewals and refurbishment for 20 tower blocks. The cut in allocation means that that has had to be reduced to £2.5 million. That means that work can only proceed on eight blocks. One of the results of that is that the residents of 12 blocks will continue to live in abysmal conditions. Only this week, an environmental inspector said that in his opinion, one block was unfit for human habitation. Pointing to the dangers, he said that the balconies were a "stepladder to oblivion". Six months ago, a 20-month-old toddler fell to his death from the balcony of his home in that block. The borough is having to restrict the number of repairs it is able to carry out on council properties, laying up bigger and more expensive problems for the future. The inevitable and only conclusion is that the Government's decision will mean that the condition of housing in both the public and private sectors in Newham will continue to decline and homelessness will become worse. It is an appalling and evil policy. I meet the human consequences at every surgery I hold. Homeless applications are currently running at about 200 per month. The Audit Commission's recent report said that homelessness has been increasing
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"over a long period of time, across all types of authority, in different regions, under all types of political control and widely varying housing policies."Newham has more than 500 families in often squalid
bed-and-breakfast accommodation. They sometimes live in ill-lit, overcrowded rooms without tables or chairs for meals, with no privacy for parents or children, with no place for the children to play or do their homework and no readily available doctor, social worker or health visitor. Newham has another 500 families in other forms of temporary accommodation. The lunacy is that it costs more to keep families in such accommodation than to build new homes, but the Government will not allow the council to do that.
The Minister may mention Estate Action. Let me tell him that the council has had 11 Estate Action bids rejected. Furthermore, now that the Government are insisting that 50 per cent. of the capital cost of Estate Action programmes count against existing HIP allocation, the council is wondering whether the scheme is worth the paperwork. The £200,000 received under the area renewal initiative is too little to be significant.
The council has no ideological hang-ups about working with the private sector and housing associations. It has concluded a partnership agreement with Laing to demolish the eight remaining TWA tower blocks of the Ronan Point type and to develop the site. It has already sold, or is completing the sale of, a number of sites in its ownership to housing associations. All the council's sites are being reviewed with the option of disposal being considered. The problem is that the level of housing association grant for housing association schemes, coupled with the high price of land and construction costs, will put the level of rents of many of those schemes beyond the reach of most of the people in the most acute housing need in Newham. The truth is that, even with the fullest possible co- operation with the council, those high costs, the recent decontrol of rent, the limitation of security and the inadequate level of subsidy mean that housing association and private sector housing cannot be an adequate substitute for local authority housing in Newham.
The Government's policy of stopping council house building and pushing councils out of housing has caused and is exacerbating the housing crisis in the borough and even more human misery and family breakdown. The council's housing investment programme for 1989-90 was a carefully worked out, realistic and necessary programme, decided upon by those on the spot. By rejecting it, the Government have sacrificed the interests of the local community to ideological dogma and condemned thousands to more heartache.
I shall allow the Minister as much time as I have given myself. I hope that he will respond seriously and not take refuge in knockabout attacks on local government as he has on previous occasions--by pretending, for example, that the borough has a large number of voids. That is certainly not true of Newham, where only 1.5 per cent. of council stock is empty ; indeed, a previous Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State congratulated the borough on its policy on voids.
Nor does Newham have large rent arrears compared with those in other boroughs. Rent arrears are being reduced in Newham. The figures tend to be misleading because Newham does not write off bad debt, as some boroughs do. It has a twin track policy on rent arrears : it
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actively counsels tenants whose rent is in arrears and it operates an active collection policy, including recovery through the courts. Its decentralised housing offices all have targets for the recovery of rent arrears. I hope that the Minister will not try to shelter behind that argument. He will know that the Government's housing benefit changes have caused problems in this regard. In my constituency some people are now spending 40 per cent. of their income on rent.I hope that the Minister will address the housing crisis in Newham seriously. The Government now have a £14.5 billion budget surplus--a great opportunity to tackle the infrastructure and the housing backlog. I shall continue to raise this matter in the House and to keep it to the fore, and if I can get the Government to take it seriously, I shall have worked in the interests of my constituents. 1.46 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. David Trippier) : I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak abouhousing in Newham. In fact, I am pleased to be allowed to speak at all, Mr. Deputy Speaker--in complete contrast to your experience and mine in the early hours of Tuesday morning.
In Newham, as in many other areas--but in Newham in particular--we are entering a new period of promise, despite what the hon. Member for Newham, North-East (Mr. Leighton) felt obliged to say. That promise has been built up over the past 10 years during which the tide has turned against years of neglect of a supposedly unfashionable part of London that has had to shoulder the legacy of a past that has sometimes been colourful but which has generally been weighed down by the burdens of industrial decline. Many housing difficulties remain to be overcome in Newham but they are now being confronted through Government policies which will transform housing in the area.
Let me respond directly to some of the questions that the hon. Member for Newham, North-East asked in his speech. There has been a significant decline in the private rented sector--from 50 per cent. of the total housing stock immediately after the war to 8 per cent. now. That is totally unacceptable. The amount of private rented sector housing has fallen for two reasons--first, because the Rent Acts have inhibited those who would be private landlords or potential investors in private rented stock, and secondly, because of the expansion of municipalisation. The problem that we face with large housing stocks--and no one denies that Newham has a large housing stock--is that it is impossible for local authorities to control and manage it effectively. I shall return to that later.
There will not be much political knockabout in my speech, and I assure the hon. Gentleman that I shall address myself to the questions that he raised. I must say, though, that I find it fascinating that, despite the Labour party's love of municipal housing, the last Labour Government reduced public expenditure in public housing in each of the three years before they were kicked out of office in 1979. Labour Members have never given me a suitable explanation of that--either because they cannot or because they know what Conservative Members suspect--that the Labour Government were forced to take such action through the IMF intervening. We are all familiar with that period in the Labour Government's chequered history.
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I will concentrate on two main ways in which the Government are acting to improve the homes and lives of Newham residents. First, we are acting through the opportunities provided by the Government's policies for the regeneration of east London--docklands and the areas beyond. All will benefit from the increased wealth that those policies are bringing. Housing has a major part in that regeneration. Secondly, we are acting through the Government's housing policies which offer choice, effective targeting of resources, and the attraction of private resources along with public money, in place of the hopelessly monolithic and unimaginative solutions which have previously been tried with good intentions but with poor results. Let me begin with the first, by explaining the benefits of the exciting programme of the London Docklands development corporation for the royal docks. Although the hon. Gentleman tried to convince the House that there is no ideological difficulty with the local authority of Newham working with the private sector, I have not seen much evidence of Newham council working with the London Docklands development corporation.Mr. Leighton : I am surprised that the Minister should say that. Does he know of the memorandum of agreement between the borough and the LDDC? The LDDC has promised to provide 1,500 houses for rent in the royal docks. The LDDC is falling behind and not delivering on the promise. The borough is working. It has regular monthly meetings with the LDDC. It is anxious to work with it.
Mr. Trippier : The last part of the hon. Gentleman's intervention tends to devalue the currency of what he is saying. He and I know how many questions he puts down in the House, which he is fully entitled to do, on the LDDC. He loses no opportunity to have a swipe at it in any debate on the Floor of the House.
I welcome the fact that Newham is working with the LDDC better than it has done in the past, but I have pointed out to the hon. Gentleman--if not to him directly, certainly to other hon. Members who represent Newham--that I should like to see an opportunity being taken to fill the vacancy on the board of the LDDC. Other local authorities are prepared to have borough councillors sitting on the boards. The hon. Gentleman knows that, if they were to respond positively, I would welcome it and also respond positively.
The programme to which I was referring and which the LDDC has promoted has meant a huge transformation in an area which was a sterile part of the borough of Newham. The LDDC has already spent or contracted to spend about £200 million in that area on land reclamation and new roads and transport links and other infrastructure. A whole new community will soon begin to emerge from the previous dereliction, providing major new shopping and leisure facilities, thousands of jobs--they are important to the hon. Gentleman and to myself--and, importantly, thousands of new homes. It is planned that 7,600 new homes will be built in the royal docks. They will include a substantial number of subsidised homes let at rents affordable to lower-paid families. The Winsor park scheme will, I hope, provide about 500 of them. I welcome the co-operation between the public and private sectors, including the local council, which should make that scheme possible.
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It is not only the homes directly within the new docklands community that will benefit from this massive new investment. I am confident that the benefits will spread far and wide throughout the borough and beyond. I remind the House that the Government's plans for the regeneration of east London include but do not end with the docklands programmes, massive though they are.In February, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport, together with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment, announced new proposals which were welcomed by the hon. Gentleman for major new transport links between central London and east Thameside. Earlier this month, my right hon. Friend informed the House of the consultants' findings on the possibilities for providing up to 20,000 new housing units on five sites in east Thameside. Those sites would be able to benefit from improved transport links, and the Government have said that they hope that they can be developed. Three of these sites--at Stratford, the Beckton gasworks and the lower Lea valley--involve land in Newham, and another is immediately adjacent to the borough, at Barking reach. All of them have potential to breathe new life into the housing of east London. All these exciting new opportunities for housing extension were taken into account when my Department published the draft strategic planning guidance for London on 6 March, which showed that the projected extra dwelling provision for Newham in the years 1987 to 2001 would amount to 14,000 units, the highest for any London borough. I am delighted that Newham is taking a lead in London housing in that way.
The hon. Gentleman has trailed a lot of figures purporting to show that many people in Newham could not afford to buy new homes in the area. I know that many people in Newham are not well off and that housing must be affordable to them, but the hon. Gentleman should not under-estimate the capacity of people to buy their homes. Look at the success of the right-to- buy policy on which many Opposition Members have poured scorn. Many Labour authorities are still trying to frustrate the policy. When hon. Gentlemen refer to the housing investment programme, they often fail to mention the amount of money that is drawn down in capital receipts. Of course, that makes a substantial difference to the money that is available for improved housing within borough boundaries.
The Government's policies will provide new wealth for the people of Newham and new capacity for them to buy their own homes, if they wish to do so. I assure the hon. Gentleman that I shall always be on the look-out for sensible and realistic ways to assist people in that endeavour.
I shall deal with the resources that are being invested in Newham's public housing and how those are being targeted to achieve most effect. Public housing forms about 36 per cent. of the stock in Newham. That stock needs resources to be drawn from all available sources, and used and managed effectively. Local authorities set their own priorities for housing within the total resources available to them. On 1 November, my right hon. Friend announced that the gross provision for capital expenditure by local authorities on housing in 1989-90 will be 13.5 per cent. higher than had been previously planned. This is the
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fourth successive year in which it has been possible to increase provisions, thanks to the continuing success of the right-to-buy policy. Through the receipts that that provides, local authorities have the growing resource of spending power to supplement capital borrowing.The hon. Gentleman mentioned Estate Action. I announced on 14 December that allocations to local authorities through the Department's Estate Action programme would again be increased in 1989-90, by 36 per cent. to £190 million. Estate Action targets resources at rundown council estates.
We cannot accept all of the bids that are made by local authorities, but in view of the substantial increase in real terms, that we have given to the Estate Action programme, it is clear that we shall be able to accept those programmes more than ever before. We are only too delighted to work with local authorities, especially in London, using this means of delivering taxpayers' money to turn round those estates in the worst condition. The contribution of the local authority to which the hon. Gentleman directly referred, should match ours. In that way this would be a true partnership. I have heard of many successes in Newham's Estate Action programme.
Mr. Leighton : I am listening to the Minister with great interest and close attention. Because only two minutes are left for the debate, I hope the Minister will agree that this discussion must continue. Would he accept my invitation to sit down with us on the spot, in Newham, and continue this discussion?
Mr. Trippier : Yes, I am only too happy to go to local authorities to discuss things in that way, and I certainly accept the hon. Gentleman's invitation. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. A visit might help us to clear up some of the points that I was making earlier. Perhaps it might even lead to further improvements in the relationship between Newham and the London Docklands development corporation, which possibly both of us might welcome. Because of the time it is impossible for me now to cover all the points that were raised by the hon. Gentleman and in view of his kind invitation I shall be only too happy to continue the conversation as he suggests. My difficulty--perhaps I can get this quickly on the record--is that despite what the hon. Gentleman says, Newham has the highest percentage of vacant dwellings in the whole of London. That must be looked at, and although he has tried to explain it to the House-- [Interruption.] It is not a matter of conjecture ; it is a statement of fact. I understand that there are special reasons relating to the empty TWA system blocks which push up-- [Interruption.] Yes, this is part of it--which push up Newham's total, as do the dwellings on the Woodlands estate, where the council is in partnership with Laing in refurbishing vacant properties. Nevertheless, given the general problems of homelessness, local authorities could make far better use of their stock-- this applies to all local authorities--and I look to Newham to make every effort to bring its vacant properties back into use wherever feasible.
2 pm
Mr. John Prescott (Kingston upon Hull, East) : On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I apologise for delaying colleagues for a few seconds, but today on ITN,
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we witnessed again a clear breach of air security at Heathrow. Three lads have taken film of themselves boarding a British Airways jumbo jet and getting into the cockpit. In view of those circumstances--Mr. Brian Sedgemore (Hackney, South and Shoreditch) : Where is the Minister?
Mr. Prescott : In view of those circumstances and of the warning received from the Federal Aviation Administration about the possible hi- jacking of a plane, have you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, received any notification from the Secretary of State for Transport to the effect that he can tell us anything about the latest breach of security, especially in the light of his assurance to us in the House less than 70 hours ago that security at Heathrow is okay? It is not, and the travelling public are concerned about it. It is outrageous. The Secretary of State should appear before the House to explain his position.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Paul Dean) : I have not received a request from the Secretary of State about a statement. The hon. Gentleman has put his point on the record.
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Magistrates Courts (Clerks)
2.1 pm
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